


laisser ma vie sur ton épaule

by zonophone



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 15:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10282358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zonophone/pseuds/zonophone
Summary: Looking at Shuu through the prism of other people in his life-the relationships he never had.





	

Shuu's hands are in his pocket when he first catches sight of her.  
Later this becomes an anchor point he returns to—his gloved hands deep inside his pocket sweating ever so slightly at the sight.

 

Kamishiro Rize is unlike anyone he's encountered before.  
She stands, legs wide apart, silhouetted by the bright industrial lights behind her and turns just enough to stop their glare from blinding him.

 

She's up to her arms in blood. He first notices her white dress—possibly three years old, at least four seasons out of style—dotted with dark red. This must be her idea of a feast.

 

 

 

 

He feasts in the comfort of his home.  
The servants set the table and Papa sits at the head, pats his hand and wears a warm smile. Shuu watches the way his father's delicate hands work the knife and fork to cut the meat on his plate. Their cook adds garnish for decoration—Shuu hasn't tried eating it anymore after the time he was six and was sick for a day after—and Mirumo expertly avoids it. He catches Shuu staring with a smile, indulging, 'Would you like some wine?'

 

His father has taken him once or twice to a dinner show.  
'Papa enjoys it,' Mirumo told him one day returning from the restaurant, 'but I prefer it when it's just the two of us.'  
Shuu smiled, of course. He did too. But he craved the company of others. The mansion felt so empty during days, after school.  
He finds the dinner show exciting—humans are resourceful creatures, especially so on the face of death—and the dishes are beautifully prepared. There's lively conversation and most of those present are interesting enough for him.

 

 

Shuu knows most ghouls live vastly different lives than this. No places at the table, no forks, no wine. Most times no warm smiles. He's heard stories from the servants, from Matsumae, and every time, with every story, he aches. It's sad, he thinks. It's wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kamishiro Rize doesn't paint a sad picture. Nor a wrong one. She turns her head towards him, lets go of her hold on the body at her feet, and smiles.

Inside his pockets, his gloved hands break out in a cold sweat. How unsightly. He's glad to be wearing gloves.

It's not quite a smile, of course. It's not that which he notices, in any case. It's the way her mouth's painted a deep red, her lips full, almost shiny, and blood trails from the corners of her mouth down to her long neck, the curve of her throat, the dip of her collarbones. She is beautiful, he realizes. She's beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

Shuu's hands dig deep into the pockets of his shorts for the treasures he's unearthed in the large rose garden. A button with clouds inside; a hair clip with a plastic flower attached to it (must belong to Kiyoko); a rock shaped almost like a triangle, almost like the arrow head of ancient humans he studied last year in the second grade: it reminds him of the large colorful pictures on the textbook. He takes his treasures out of his pockets and places them on the boudoir.

 

He does this, sometimes. Not often.  
His father has kept his mother's boudoir intact in their room. Her perfume and jewelry and make up, her hairbrush and creams and the lights lining the large mirror where his form is reflected. Shuu sits there, sometimes, while his father is at work and Matsumae in school, places his precious possessions next to hers.

 

He takes her clothes, neatly kept inside her closet, and lays them on the bed. Sometimes he wears her cardigans, the sleeves soft, beautiful, and too long. Sometimes he just inspects them, the fabric, the cuts, the embroidery, the seams, and the way they hang about the mannequin she kept in the closet.

 

He slides into the gazar one-seam gown—his favorite—and hums as he sits once more on her chair in front of the large mirror, sprays perfume to the rhythm of the song he's just invented—his Papa's said he's a prodigious musician. The deep red lipstick bar slides along his lips smoothly, it tastes strange but not unwelcome. Shuu has seen women on film apply mascara but finds the precision of movements needed to accomplish the task too daunting. Smears of black around the corner of his eye attest to his failure. He'll learn in time, he knows. For now he twirls around the room once or twice. He twirls his fingers around the long cord of the telephone pretending to call someone who's always on the other end of the line willing to listen to what he has to say, silently encouraging him to share his innermost thoughts, his dreams, his ambitions.

 

When he's bored he slides out of the dress and places it inside the plastic cover that protects it from time. He returns her jewelry to their place on the boudoir, and his new found treasures to theirs inside his pockets. He places the lid back on the perfume bottle and closes the drawers that keep her hairbrush—mother of pearl handle engraved with her initials, a present from her brother on her birthday—and her make up. Distractedly he rubs the lipstick off his lips with the back of his right hand and stares at the red smudge left there for a second too long. He looks up at the mirror and his lips are still as red as before, and so are the corners of his mouth, his chin, his upper lip, as if he's had a bloody nose—he's never but one of his classmates did in first grade.

It's then that he wonders what she looked like.

What she may have looked like outside of pictures she posed for. With her hair undone and messy and a crooked, lazy smile, her make up running, blood dripping off the corners of her mouth after a meal. What she looked like when exhaustion, or anger, or pain, or happiness, colored her face.

 

Shuu rubs the lipstick off his face in a hurry, his own eyes watching him in desperation from behind the mirror. Something wraps around his organs, inside his body, and wrenches them with a painful grasp.

 

 

 

 

 

He returns Kamishiro Rize's smile in full and she laughs. It echoes all over Tokyo.

 

 

 

 

Time passes them by in the café as they watch humans and ghouls come and go. She reads books he's read before, ones he's wanted to try, and shares her thoughts easily, as if she believed that he's really listening. He is. She is too, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kaneki Ken accepts his invitation to dinner easily. Their conversation flows as if meant to be. Shuu traces his finger round the edges of his glass just as comfortably as it traces the edge of Kaneki's face before they step onto the squash court. Kaneki doesn't pull away. He's shy.

Inside Shuu's stomach this thing he can't name takes shape. He's felt this before. He can't wait to be at the restaurant, to dig his teeth into Kaneki's flesh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the first meeting with Kamishiro, he changes his eating habits in time. Enjoys the feasts at home with his father and Matsumae and his mother's place at the table always set in her memory. But he hungers for more. He roams the streets in ways he's seen Kamishiro do. A thing has taken up residence inside his stomach and it flexes its muscles joyfully the first time he sinks his teeth into the flesh of a young man's neck in the back of the man's car and he catches his reflection in the rearview mirror. His lips painted in red, his hair messy, his make up running, blood dripping off the corners of his mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

Blood drips off his face as he leans in closer to Kaneki sitting in the restaurant's arena. It's the scrapper's blood, splattered all over his suit, his mask, his hair. It tastes peculiar but he can barely tell—Kaneki's scent is—  
'It'll be difficult but... could you please forget about this for me?' he whispers into Kaneki's ear, feels his breath, sees the stain of sweat his gloved hand leaves on Kaneki's shoulder. He can't let anyone else have this meal, the thing inside his stomach jumps, turns, expands. Nobody else but me.

 

 

 

 

 

He shares his thoughts on the experience with Kamishiro, describes the way the young man's neck felt, his reflection in the car's rearview mirror, the feeling in his gut. She laughs. Inside his stomach, or higher, the thing expands and contracts. It's tying itself into a knot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'I can't trust you, Tsukiyama,' Kaneki tells him with certainty, his voice lowered, like a threat. He expected as much—he looked on at the scene of the makeshift family of Kaneki, Banjoi, Hinami, and the others with distance, always. Nothing like his own, for sure. So he's ready.  
But the thing inside his stomach grows when Kaneki says 'But, I think having a comrade like you wasn't bad.' It takes up the space inside his chest when Kaneki continues 'If it's possible, please continue lending me your sword.' And it shivers inside of his chest, trembling as it flexes, contracts and expands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'I'd like you to come as my guest to a dinner show, si tu veux ?' he tells her casually over a cup of coffee, from behind his copy of _La Confession d'un enfant du siècle_.  
She looks up at him, above the rim of her glasses. She says nothing.  
It's late and the café is closing so they walk side by side into the night.  
'What kind of dinner show?' she finally asks.  
'At this restaurant,' Shuu explains, smiling proudly. Inside his stomach the thing expands and wraps around his heart too. He feels warm, it's full. He watches her expressions, her soft smile. 'would you like to come? If you're my guest you can—'  
'I'm pleased by your invitation' she cuts him off. She doesn't bother to hide her disdain. 'But I'm sorry, I'm not interested. It'd bore me.' She steps further away from him as she speaks, her smile now full of mockery. 'For a ghoul to fuss over flavor and form an elaborate plan over it stinks of being upper class. Like a human. Utterly ridiculous.'  
The way she says the name given to him by the doves seals it.

Shuu feels something deflating.

She's ugly, he realizes. She is so ugly. He wonders how he hadn't noticed before. Even the way she snickers is nauseating. His stomach turns upside down, empties itself from any thing that wasn't even there. There was nothing. When he clenches his fists he notices his palms are sweating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'You can't go!' Kanae screams over the thumping noises in his ears as he leaps out of the wheel chair towards Kaneki and his ragtag group of CCG children. 'You can't go!' he hears but the tremolo inside his chest, the thing that'd been tearing at his insides these past three years, eating his organs, showing him images of his own face painted in the deep red of Kaneki's blood, his dead body at Shuu's feet on the floor, his mother's lipstick, the skulls lining his bedroom, grows into an earthquake—the whole world shakes and quivers with him, he's gonna make it, he's almost there—'Let's spend time together again, Kaneki!!' he says knowing there's no way Kaneki would forget him while the thing claws its way out of him making the emptiness inside of him feel almost hopeful.

 

 

Until it yanks it all away, just two steps from Kaneki.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next time, he thinks the thing must've left him stranded atop the Lunatic Eclipse, because he's able to smile when he tells his dear Kaneki, his king 'Let us let what has transpired in the past be water under the bridge'. And his palms don't sweat at all.

 


End file.
